“You are right,” said he. “I
am a blackguard, and you are an angel of purity and
goodness. Forgive me, I will never tempt nor torment
you again. For pity’s sake forgive me.
You don’t know what men’s passions are.
Forgive me!”

“With all my heart, dear,” said Mary,
crying gently.

He put both arms suddenly round her neck and kissed
her wet eyes with a sigh of despair. Then he
seemed to tear himself away by a great effort, and
she leaned limp and powerless on the gate, and heard
his footsteps die away into the night. They struck
chill upon her foreboding heart, for she felt that
they were parted.

CHAPTER X.

THE GORDIAN KNOT.

Walter, however, would not despair until he had laid
the alternative before his father. He did so,
firmly but coolly.

His father, irritated by the scene with Bartley, treated
Walter’s proposal with indignant scorn.

Walter continued to keep his temper, and with some
reluctance asked him whether he owed nothing, not
even a sacrifice of his prejudices, to a son who had
never disobeyed him, and had improved his circumstances.

“Come, sir,” said he; “when the
happiness of my life is at stake I venture to lay
aside delicacy, and ask you whether I have not been
a good son, and a serviceable one to you?”

“Yes, Walter,” said the Colonel, “with
this exception.”

“Then now or never give me my reward.”

“I’ll try,” said the grim Colonel;
“but I see it will be hard work. However,
I’ll try and save you from a mesalliance.”

“A mesalliance, sir? Why, she is
a Clifford.”

“The deuce she is!”

“As much a Clifford as I am.”

“That is news to me.”

“Why, one of her parents was a Clifford, and
your own sister. And one of mine was an Irish
woman.”

“Yes; an O’Ryan; not a trader; not a small-coal
man.”

“Like the Marquis of Londonderry, sir, and the
Earl of Durham. Come, father, don’t sacrifice
your son, and his happiness and his love for you,
to notions the world has outlived. Commerce does
not lower a gentleman, nor speculation either, in
these days. The nobility and the leading gentry
of these islands are most of them in business.
They are all shareholders, and often directors of
railways, and just as much traders as the old coach
proprietors were. They let their land, and so
do you, to the highest bidder, not for honor or any
romantic sentiment, but for money, and that is trade.
Mr. Bartley is his own farmer; well, so was Mr. Coke,
of Norfolk, and the Queen made him a peer for it—­what
a sensible sovereign! Are Rothschild and Montefiore
shunned for their speculations by the nobility?
Whom do their daughters marry? Trade rules the
world, and keeps it from stagnation. Genius writes,
or paints, or plays Hamlet—­for money; and
is respected in exact proportion to the amount of
money it gets. Charity holds bazars, and sells
at one hundred per cent. profit, and nearly every
new church is a trade speculation. Is my happiness
and hers to be sacrificed to the chimeras and crotchets
that everybody in England but you has outlived?”